Around 450 unaccompanied teen migrant girls relocated from a Houston housing facility Saturday and authorities have reportedly not offered much information about the closure.
However, an immigrant advocate claimed it was due to an incident that took place there on Friday, Fox News reported.
The advocate said ambulances and law enforcement vehicles were spotted outside the building located near Bush Intercontinental Airport and cited information he reportedly received from an employee of his group.
“There seemed to be a lot of confusion as to what was happening,” said Cesar Espinosa, director of the group FIEL Houston.
“The people that were there looked like they were in a sad stance, kind of with their head down and seemed like they were wiping tears away,” he explained.
The Fox article continued:
The Houston Chronicle reported Saturday that the closure followed its reporting about crowding at the facility — and that an adult staffer from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had died there Friday night in an incident that was unrelated to the transfer of the girls. The girls at the Houston facility had been there since April 1.
The site was known as an Emergency Intake Site for Unaccompanied Children and operated by the National Association of Christian Churches, according to the Associated Press (AP).
The death of the volunteer, who was also a federal employee, was not related to the site’s closure, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) told ABC 13.
The volunteer reportedly experienced a medical emergency Friday and later passed away.
“That was the only reason that there were ambulances there the night before,” the representative said, adding the person’s death was due to underlying health conditions.
It was not immediately clear what led up to the episode and the person’s name is not public.
Espinosa told reporters he toured the facility and claimed there was no room for social distancing.
“They were only allowed to get up from their cot to use the restroom as well as to shower,” Espinosa commented, adding everything brought in was temporary, such as showers and restrooms.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a statement on Saturday regarding the closure:
Today, HHS announced that all of the children in HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) care at the Emergency Intake Site (EIS) for Unaccompanied Children at the National Association of Christian Churches site in Houston, Texas (NACC Houston) will be immediately unified with sponsors or transferred to an appropriate ORR facility.
Meanwhile, U.S. Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security detention facilities have been flooded with Central American migrants smuggled into the country by cartel-connected actors, Breitbart News reported on April 2.
“Some of those facilities are at 10-times their capacity as officials try to move arriving migrants along the process, while others are released without court dates,” the outlet said.
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